So extinction might be reversible? Flowing wooly mammoth blood found in carcass

The frozen body of a 10,000 to 15,000 year old mammoth found on a remote island in the Arctic Ocean has yielded a stunning find: blood so well preserved that it flowed freely from the ancient mammal, according to Russian scientists.

…

The muscle tissue of the frozen carcass was also stunning — the color of fresh meat, Grigoriev said, totally unlike meat that is centuries old.

If this find holds up, watch for people reopening the recent debate about bringing recently extinct creatures back to life by cloning them:

Within five years, a woolly mammoth will likely be cloned, according to scientists who have just recovered well-preserved bone marrow in a mammoth thigh bone. Japan’s Kyodo News first reported the find. – From Discover, 2011

Within five years is 2016, so most of us will get a chance to see if that happens. More important perhaps, some theories will be tested with evidence.

1. The blood was originally deemed to have been contamination from a later scavanger that must have been killed and dragged away from the mammoth carcass.

2. The C-14 tests will yield results that seem to be relatively recent until the tests are “calibrated”, after which they will be in excellent agreement with expected values, once again proving the Fact of Evolution.

3. It will be announced that mammoth blood must have had remarkable antifreeze properties that kept ice crystals from forming inside any cells, once again proving the Fact of Evolution. A multi-year research project is launched to isolate and identify this amazing blood component.

4. Similarly, the ice crystals that preserved the carcass must have been exactly the right composition at one time to have prevented background radiation external to the carcass, thus preserving the mammoth DNA, and once again proving the Fact of Evolution.

5. After mammoth DNA is inserted into a fertilized elephant egg and inserted in vitrio once again demonstrating the triumph of Science over religious superstition.